marzo 31, 2023
Relational and Social Constructionist Consortium of Ecuador (IRYSE)
Diego Tapia Figueroa, Ph.D. y Maritza Crespo Balderrama, M.A.
“First find Shakespeare, and let him find you later”.
Harold Bloom (2000, p. 18)
“What is life? A marching ghost; a poor comedian who struts and shakes during the hour that his role lasts, but nobody remembers a moment later; a story sung by an idiot with a big device and that means nothing… You come to use your language: dispatch quickly, tell your story”.
(Shakespeare, trans. in 2003, p. 207).
We base ourselves for this series, on this thesis, from which we extract -adapting them- the proposals and invitations to a different relational position for the construction of the process of transformative therapeutic dialogue.
How are social constructionism and collaborative and dialogic practices useful for the relational co-construction of space for therapeutic training and supervision? Tapia Figueroa, Diego, Thesis (2018) for the Ph.D. with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and the TAOS INSTITUTE of the United States.
Processes of supervision, co-vision, inter-vision.
In these joint processes (supervision, co-study, inter-vision) we have invited people to share interests and tastes in literature, philosophy, and cinema. “How to make a large part of society see (…), that Philosophy and Literature are what makes us people, instead of simple and brutalized beings full of information and technological devices with which to make the imbecile? ” says Javier Marías (2017).
Asking ourselves what we do, to move on from what is already seen, known, felt, experienced, and said.
What do we do relationally and what do we do relationally differently? Now is the time for the unsaid, the ambiguously felt, the language that is a mystery, to begin to be embodied in the dialogue with others, including readers; in the memory in the permanent metamorphosis of being; in the memory of recurrent oblivion.
What do they like to read, what literature, which authors are they preferring; who has moved them?
With this question, we sometimes begin one of those supervision and inter-vision meetings. In this sum of multiple voices that dissolve in the air, there is the opening that says that the possibilities are endless. Joy is possible; it is that strange form of uncertainty that then becomes a question: what is it to be happy? And the answer (what do they tell us about our needs) in which there is universal human agreement is: to have someone who loves us and to have someone to love; an interlocutor with whom to dialogue, that is to be happy.
Sharing the reflections so that social actions -words that are social acts- are the possibilities that expand relationships, and paths in a journey of discovery and joy, based on an attitude of permanent curiosity, which questions one’s knowledge and that of others, doubting the answers that homologate and impose a unique form of thought.
With the verbatim quote from Derrida (2003, p. 11):
Someone, you or I, comes forward and says: I would like to learn to live at last. Finally, but why? Learn to live. Strange maxim. Who would learn? Whose? Learn (and teach) to live, but to whom? Will it ever be known? Will we never know how to live, and, in the first place, will we know what it means to “learn to live”? And why “finally”? By itself, out of context – although a context always remains open, therefore fallible and insufficient – this maxim without phrase – forms a syntagm little less than intelligible. On the other hand, to what extent does your language allow itself to be translated?
With the awareness that at the moment all the possibility of being present is at stake, we are the moment, the moment is life. Live in the moment without anxiety. We are memory, we are forgetting, we are language, the dialogue that opens in a book, in a conversation. Art is a generator of well-being while being in the process. Being able to read and share our readings is life. Reading makes me -and us- happy.
Harlene Anderson (1999) argues -among other things- that these practices are not a technique, but a way of being. It is invited -in each encounter- to adopt a posture, an attitude, and a tone that reflects a way of being in relationships and conversations with people; including a way of thinking, talking, acting, and responding to them. This philosophical stance becomes a philosophy of life, Harlene Anderson tells us.
A vision of the world that does not separate the professional from the personal.
The integration of different manifestations and expressions of art has the intention of expanding the worldview of the participants in these meetings, inviting them to make the qualitative leap of technicians -more or less efficient- to become reflective and committed professionals, from a new sensitivity (which is achieved with art) in the construction of well-being in favor of themselves and others.
Following Anderson, the meetings invite members of the technical team, operators, and professionals to avoid assuming or understanding too quickly what the other shares with them; to maintain the posture of a curious learner and a dialogic conversation with oneself as a first step towards dialogue with others and discover the beauty that is embodied in the development of an attitude and an aesthetic look at life.
It is proposed to keep the inquiry within the parameters of the client’s agenda (children, families, communities) and not to reach only the organizational proposal and to offer -in the work with families- simultaneously multiple and contradictory ideas that allow them to compare, value and decide actions.
Finally, the participants of the meetings are invited to use a language consistent with what families are living, which includes thinking, listening, and speaking in a responsive, assertive, tentative way and questioning the great dominant truths, the “normal”, to give way to a way of life that is felt and has meaning from their own and mutual reflection on the social implications, cultural and everyday where people develop their lives.
Collaborative and dialogic practices, the generative perspective in psychotherapy and in working with communities and families, are a clear alternative to individualism since this approach implies dialogue and construction with the other and this always happens in some social context, within dialogical ethics and aesthetics, where alternative relationships are generated, to promote social, artistic and political transformations.
The approach based on a collaborative/generative process implies a change when it comes to how we think from the language we use and how we create our self-knowledge (as people in our contexts), from which emerges a natural way of being in the way we relate and converse, giving value by thinking with, feeling with and acting with people.
In this therapeutic approach, the consultant (the children, their families, and communities) is the expert and owner of their life, and the facilitator (the member-operator of the technical team); is the expert in facilitating the process and generating the space for conversation, where both consultant and facilitator, are transformed in the course of the collaborative or practical relationship in another relational context.
This is a relationship where the other is communicated that he is a unique person, where he is recognized, appreciated, and legitimized as someone who deserves to be heard. If we contribute together in this -from a reflective, responsible, critical, and ethical dialogue- we can collaborate and build with others, other diverse realities, respectful of the needs of each participant.
On curiosity, Foucault tells us quoted by Juan Pastor Martín and Anastasio Ovejero Bernal (2007, p. 130),
Curiosity is a vice that has been stigmatized successively by Christianity, by a certain philosophy, and even by a certain conception of science. Curiosity is a word I like. It evokes interest, evokes one’s care for what exists and what might exist, a willingness to find strange and singular around us, a certain relentless impulse to break into familiar things and look differently at the same things, a fervor to grasp what happens, a contingency against the traditional hierarchies of the important and the essential.
The space for collaborative and generative dialogues meant a continuous creation of permanent construction of new spaces for the participants (and teamwork) which generated questions, reflections, and alternatives on which the social dialogue was coordinated and built so that different and innovative forms of relationship were possible. A process where conversations highlighted creativity and curiosity to learn together, rescuing the pleasure of dialogue to generate alternatives and learn with others.
Seeing each occasion as an opportunity to put into play questions asked from this position of “not knowing” with enthusiasm as a way of talking openly to seek other perspectives to understand the actions that the participants developed in their work and family contexts.
All those issues that the co-researchers saw or considered as “conflicts” between people and that -thanks to different dialogues- began to deconstruct themselves, to take unforeseen meanings, to construct something unthinkable relationally.
Meetings for collaborative/generative dialogues, which build and transform.
“Can we open up a space where we can talk about our differences without trying to persuade or demonstrate that one position is superior to another? Our focus should not be on the agreement but on forms of understanding.”
Sheila McNamee (2016) Taos Institute
Dora Fried Schnitman (2017) states:
We call dialogic creation the gradual construction in time of something new between the participants and the professional. Together, in relation, they open inquiries to reflect and ask questions -they create new spaces for dialogue and social coordination- promoting perspectives, innovative narratives, learning, and new forms of relationship… dialogue is a process of relational construction of meanings and actions between people in social spaces.
They are asked questions that allow them to understand “how so” these issues impact, affect or matter to them. For example, we can ask ourselves: “How can a certain conversational resource be useful for the construction of a new story? What pragmatic effects do these conversations produce? The key word in this context is utility” (Sampaio, P; Dos Santos, M; Guanaes-Lorenzi, C., 2014. p. 169).
The aim is to understand, by conversing reflectively, the meanings that these issues have for the people who have raised them and, in doing so, new perspectives are opened up for understanding how they know and live their relationships, how they think and practice their work and what future possibilities can be created.
One of the intentions of promoting this type of reflection is that each one assumes co-responsibility concerning the place from which they talk with the consultants, the answers they give, and the results that occur in these interrelationships; in a process of constant ethical self-reflection on the language that contributes to the joint construction of new meanings.
The search for meaning, with collaborative/generative dialogues, has to do with the fact that participants connect different issues with their own significant issues (being in relationships). This is posed from questions that arise from the same reflective conversations that are socialized.
In this way, participants experience a real sense of being capable and competent, of having resources, and of making them work. By being listened to with genuine human interest and authentic curiosity, each participant is recognized and legitimized by the entire team; this gives them the confidence to get involved in the process, and to narrate their achievements and successful experiences in the processes related to the proposed topics. In the exchange of experiences on which one reflects, one appreciates and learns from the skills, achievements, and capacities of others. Dialogue generates curiosity to ask and tell. By telling one’s own relevant stories, to others, they acquire new meanings and other perspectives.
Something fundamental that occurs throughout the meetings is that when dialogue is opened about the stories told, they acquire new meanings. It opens up a process of authorship of one’s own stories that shows that each one has the possibility and the right to rewrite them, in new and different ways, for his own life.
Thus it is sought to broaden, deepen and expand the possibilities; to overcome hierarchies; to give voice to the multiple participating voices (the internal ones themselves, included); to create the conditions for a committed dialogue with others.
The work methodology proposes the relational construction and responds to the present moment of each meeting and to the concrete needs of those who are getting involved and participating in each day, guided by action-reflection-action for the co-construction of new relational realities.
Connections, links, significant relational links, affection, appreciation, respect, and recognition are co-created among all the participants of this collaborative and generative learning space. Each person is valued, and their contribution is recognized in the team and the process. Its importance is said, manifested (not only by the facilitator but by his colleagues).
This contributes to developing a sense of belonging, of co-responsibility for what is to be built together.
Questions for the facilitator during the collaborative-reflective learning process
The constant reflection on how each one feels in the process, on how the topics were worked, and on the learning that is being achieved, makes the space be experienced as one of growth, of human and professional enrichment.
Dialogue about what is being experienced in this process, about what is touching each of the participants, about what connects with their being opens reflective dimensions to take responsibility (ethically) with oneself to create conditions of possibility to contribute to the lives of other people.
Grandesso (2014) argues that -as a social constructionist therapist who works with collaborative and dialogic practices- there is a clear understanding of the importance of dialogue as the context for transformation; therefore, dialogue (methodologically) is organized from the conversation itself. And this way of being with is what opens up the possibilities for them to be creative and innovative dialogues, transformative dialogic practices.
| How can I contribute assertively to co-create a relational climate that is positive for this joint learning process? | What concrete challenges and expectations do these people have and from where are they talking? | What other options and alternatives for dialogue can we generate in these meetings, which make them feel safe, and confident to help connect with the conversational, reflective, and joint learning process? | How can we invite them to recognize complexity, to accept that there is no single perspective to understand and work in therapy, in relational and social processes? | How do we invite the conversation to cover the complexity of the process? |
The respectful openness to question the established, to question all kinds of beliefs, makes it possible to start a dialogue in which observing the details becomes important; in which deep listening (with the whole being) is particularly significant; and, where accepting diversity and otherness allows the discovery of resources and possibilities that are also complex.
This sensitivity to dialogue with others mobilizes creative resources for the joint construction of new meanings and transformative social actions.
It is interesting to see how participants are surprised that, in the spaces of supervision, co-vision, inter-vision, and through group conversations and self-reflective questions, emotions are opened up and they can be given permission to be vulnerable since they are offered respectful containment and sincere acceptance.
In dialogue, in small groups, implicitly or explicitly, we reach a sense of who we are, what is real, and what is correct. The dialogues allow both team members and the facilitator to experience an appreciative view of diversity, and expand the limits of what we know by not remaining in cultural or psychiatrical stereotypes so that conversation can be facilitated broadening people´s horizons. By experiencing it, we´ll be able to experience it with families and communities.
The meetings of supervision, co-vision, and inter-vision are constituted in moments to narrate experiences, achievements, successes, and also pains, frustrations, and losses. Stories on which the same group -in collective reflections- will offer and socialize their actions in similar circumstances, or their ideas and perceptions about their possibilities; recognizing the positive resources of those who generously and courageously share their personal, complex, difficult, and painful experiences.
The creation of new perspectives to project ourselves into the future leads us to a rigorous work of criticism and reflective self-criticism (assertive and constructive) on our professional theories, our acquired knowledge, and our cultural beliefs; to question them and -in a process of joint reflection- to see their pragmatic usefulness in our relational and social practices, in our concrete contexts.
The reflection with the co-researchers is constantly focused on trying to accompany -facilitate- the process, coordinating it relationally, to contribute with new options and possibilities that expand the capacities of understanding and a relational interweaving (for action); socially productive, respectful, open and positive among all participants.
SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, H. (1999). Conversation, language, and possibilities. A postmodern approach to therapy. Buenos Aires, Argentina, Editorial Amorrortu.
Bloom, H. (2000). How to read and why. Barcelona, Spain: Editorial Anagrama.
Derrida, J. (2003). Spectres of Marx. Madrid, Spain: Editorial Trota.
Fried Schnitman, D. (Mi Diario -DTF- de campo-2017) Dentro of the Diploma in Perspective and Generative Professional Practice- Fundación INTERFAS.
Gergen, K (2016). The Relational Self. Beyond the Self and the Community. Bilbao, Spain: Editorial Desclée de Brouwer, S.A.
McNamee, S. (2016) Virtual meeting of the TAOS Network of relational research.
Marías, J. (19 March 2017). Prosaic Era – The Phantom Zone. Retrieved from https://javiermariasblog.wordpress.com/)&biw=1280&bih=645#imgrc=2X5Vcgtac0P1FM
Pastor, J & Ovejero, A (2007). Michel Foucault, toolbox against domination. Oviedo, Spain: Ediciones de la Universidad de Oviedo.
Sampaio, P; Dos Santos, M; Guanaes-Lorenzi, C. (2014). Family participation in mental health treatment: stories about dialogue and inclusion. Journal Social constructionism: discourse, practice, and production of knowledge. U. Ribeirão Preto.
Shakespeare, W. (2003). Hamlet. Madrid, Spain. Editorial Santillana.
Tapia Figueroa, Diego, Thesis (2018) for the Ph.D. with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) and the TAOS INSTITUTE of the USA.
English translation of Bruno Tapia Naranjo.
